Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head

by Hilary Jocelyn

I’m looking out of my window on this lazy Sunday afternoon… and guess what? It’s raining ! Again! And it’s the big stuff, that is falling heavily upon us, like shards of liquid glass.

So, most of you are probably holed up at home, watching the drops as they slide down your windows and land in a wet mush on the ground below. Maybe the rain will force you to do those inside jobs that you have been putting off all summer, like cleaning your food encrusted stove, or dusting behind the corners of those ‘never to be looked behind ‘places that we all have hidden away somewhere in our homes. The kind of chores that get put off when the weather is kinder. But. maybe I am misjudging your energy level, and as I write, you are sprawled out on the couch watching the latest Netflix series, or tucking into a good page-turning book, while the rain pelts down outside. You might even be glued to a news channel, listening and watching the many worldwide weather disasters that are indeed unfolding around the globe.

My first memory of rain was as a young child. I’m not sure exactly how old I was, but I know I was wee enough that I had to stand on the very tops of my little tippytoes to look out the window of our front door, which was about waist height for most adults. So, I am guessing that I was about six. A few days earlier I had been taken with my primary school class to watch an amateur ballet that was being performed at our local theatre. I have always had a hard time sitting still, and so at the beginning of the awe inspiring pirouetting that was happening on the stage in front of me, I followed my urge to stand up, and to dance along with them in the aisle beside me. This seemed to seriously irritate my teacher, and so to avoid her unsmiling looks of disapproval, I sat back down and bounced up and down for a while on the scratchy velvet seat. As I still secretly enjoyed the odd nap time, I then dropped off into a contented sleep. Dreaming of tutus and pointy ballet shoes.

This artistic event must have left a big indent on my young imagination, and a few days later, as I stood watching the familiar Scottish rain falling from behind our front door window, I noticed how the rain actually danced, as it landed in the ever-widening, wind rippled puddles. I watched the raindrops plop down from the sky and spin around as they twisted into the sodden ground. I could imagine the raindrops, dressed in white tutus, twirling high on their toes, performing with Mother Nature’s perfection and beauty. I was enthralled. Here was my own ballet, playing out right before my very eyes. What’s more, I had a front-row seat, and could move along in unison with them as much as I wanted to, without offending anyone

That spectacle has stayed with me over many decades, and every time I see the wet stuff falling, and landing in puddles, I remember that pristine, rain-dancing moment.

Growing up in Scotland, where rain is often a daily event, enabled me to establish a unique relationship with all its many shapes and sizes. I mean, you kind of have to develop some kind of rain tolerance, as otherwise, given the climate, you would pretty well have to live indoors, or hide under an umbrella, most of the time.

One of my first memories of rain here in Canada, was one evening when we were invited to a barbecue at a friend’s house. An hour or so before it was due to start, we got a call to tell us that the party was cancelled “because of the rain.” I was truly mystified. What had the rain got to do with a group of people gathering together to barbecue? From a Scottish perspective, if social events were cancelled because of rain, I promise you that most of our lives would be spent pent-up inside our four dry walls.

I remember camping in the rain as a child, snuggled up beside my two sisters in an old canvas tent, while my parents lay squished in the dryness of our nearby car. I woke up to an odd, unexpected sensation, and realized that I was gently floating around on my air mattress. It turned out that my dad had pitched the tent in the dark over a ditch, which had promptly filled up with water when the down-pour was underway. Later that night, all five of us huddled in the car with each others’ elbows in our ribs, and someone’s knobbly knees in the back of our spines.

Other childhood holidays were all similarly damp, and due to a mist, (or to use the Scottish word – a “Haa”) that usually accompanies that darn rain, we often couldn’t see more than a few yards in front of us as we plunged along trails, or up sides of mountains, with a damp, but enthusiastic parent in tow. Sadly, any summits we reached were more about slippery rocks and slithery mud, than they were about joy-inspiring views.

And so, on it goes. Stories of rain being embedded in my Northern soul. Cycling with my dearest and bestest friend and getting so wet that we were soaked to the skin, and our underwear, and yet we laughed with the exhilaration of it all as it dripped into our newly bosom-filled bras. Moving on a decade or two, cycling across one of my favourite Scottish islands with my new, unattuned to the weather, Canadian partner, who did not share my enthusiasm for the habitual wet state of affairs. I was loving it. He was hating it. After a short stand-off, where we indeed mutually queried our compatibility, we resolved our differences by stopping in a warm passing pub, for a good Scottish pint.

And then I moved across the ocean, where the attitude to rain is indeed quite different. Here in Canada, it seems the tendency is to Avoid, not to Embrace. I suppose it is a question of what we are used to, and if, as a young un, you feel the wind and the rain on your face as you are jiggled along in your stroller, it becomes as familiar as a bowl of cereal, or a mosquito in June. And maybe, like me, the more exposure you have to rain in your formative years, the more you get to actually enjoy this type of inclement dampness.

However, to be honest, rain does not always drip with fun and soggy games.

A few years ago, rain threatened to come between me and my bestest friend’s wedding day. We have a history of getting into risky scrapes and wild adventures, but this one definitely dripped with unmatched drama! She lived a short distance from the Scottish border, and the night before her marital celebration, gushing rain had deposited a record-breaking amount of water onto the earth below. More clear evidence of the unforgiving climate emergency.

A day or two earlier, I had travelled to Scotland from Wakefield, to be her- ‘Maid of Honour’ -and her ‘Key Support’,- and her- ‘After Wedding Speech Giver,’ -and her -‘General Helper and Organiser’.- Early, on the morning of the BIG Event, she came to meet me at the train station, just a few miles away from her hilly home. In an unbelievable twist of pre-nuptial misfortune, while she was waiting for me to arrive, the bridge that led back to her small village in the hills was suddenly closed to traffic because of the rising water levels that rendered it hazardous. So, we had no choice but to try desperately to find another way back to her home and wedding venue. Roads were flooded. And the series of picturesque small villages that we had to manoeuvre our way in, out, and around, had turned into numerous throbs of pulsating rivers.

Most sensible people would not have even attempted this journey, but we were in serious risk-taking mode. We stopped at each waterlogged impasse, and I got out of the car and waded through the flowing torrent to see if it was too deep for the car to drive through. The poor, elderly and already rusty car, probably never recovered from this almost total immersion, as we inched cautiously forward. The water rose up and swirled, often reaching far above the car’s wheels. Sometimes, the water level was just too high, even for us unwise, but desperate souls, and we were compelled to turn around and to find yet another way. We made it back in about four hours. Just in time for the bride-to-be, to change quickly out of her adventure-charged and soggy clothes, into something that was really quite elegant and bridal. Many guests were not so lucky, and sadly had to miss out on witnessing the “ I do “ ceremony. However, her two adult sons, decked out in traditional Scottish wedding attire, ended up walking, kilt deep, through the rushing water to get to this joyful event.

While such deluges can be fun, and lovely and wildly splash-worthy, I can’t really write about rain, without following up on a far more serious tune. I need to say that Rain can be truly quite terrible and dangerous for our planet. The kind of heavy and wet unforgiving stuff that we now have, due to the climate crisis, is not a matter to be taken lightly. Crops are indeed drowning . Farmers’ livelihoods are going down the drain as water levels rise alarmingly with each splash. Homes, and communities and even countries are being destroyed by flooding. Drinking water becomes contaminated. Fish die, Animals die. Communities die . People die.